>From:    Alicia K Drakiotes / Ferret Wise Shelter <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: The Adrenal Issue - A ferret concern
>We have other early neuters her, but none of which has shown any signs of
>adrenal tumors.
 
Obviously, we don't get MF ferrets here in Canada, and we haven't had too
bad a problem with adrenal tumours, but I can tell you that every ferret
with adrenal problems that we have had, has been an early neuter ferret.
I'm fairly convinced that the majority of the ferret farms out here got
their stock from the US somewhere, so maybe that has something do with it
(ie, genetics).
 
>From:    Jennifer Poverchuk <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Weezer is soooo weird...
>Looking into the bag...I found three remaining balloons.  At one point,
>there had been fifty in there.  God only knows what she wants with a bunch
>of balloons...
 
You need to be watchful that she doesn't *eat* the balloons and block.  I
read in Dear Abby recently that balloons are supposedly "digestable" and
pose no threat to animals who eat them ... well, I dunno if I believe that
anyway, but I suspect that a ferret couldn't digest a large balloon in 3-4
hours.  My first ferret BooBoo popped and ate a balloon that my sister had
put in his cage, and passed the whole thing.  The WHOLE thing.  He didn't
even appear to have chewed it.  I consider him the luckiest of lucky
ferrets, or else the ferret with the widest intestines in the universe...
 
Butler, our rescue with the large abcess in his ear, is just doing worse all
the time.  When we first saw the abcess it was late in the evening, so we
decided to leave it until the morning since our vet was closed.  It ruptured
later than night, so we applied pressure and tried to drain it as well as we
could (we actually thought it was a hematoma since there was no pus, just
blood).  At the vet's next day, Dr. Brondwin lanced and drained it, cleaned
it and stitched it up.  By that evening, it had filled up again.  Off to the
vet the next day.
 
Dr. B. was concerned, so he tried to drain it again and came up with a
mountain of pus.  He cut a hole into the ear that would allow the abcess to
keep draining, and we took him home and cleaned out the hole every few
hours.  It continually filled up again.  So off to the vet we went yet
again, after two days.
 
This time the vet put a drainage tube in his ear, hoping this would keep it
open and encourage it to empty.  We left Butler with him for two days.  He
called today ... it won't stop filling up with pus, so he's sending a sample
off the lab (of the pus) to see if it's something specific other than a
really stubborn abcess.
 
So Butler remains at the vet, with the threat of an amputation of most of
his ear looming in the future.  However, my vet said he only ever saw this
once before, in a cat, and the cat eventually died from the problem.  We'd
like this _not_ to be the case with Butler ... the little guy is only 15
weeks old.  Dr. B. said he wonders if it could be an immunity problem, and
since Butler came from a breeder who kept them in a filthy enclosure out of
doors, no vaccinations, and a very closed colony (ferrets ranging from 1.5
years to 15 weeks, all related) he could very well be right.
 
Vets ... any suggestions??
 
Sheena - [log in to unmask]                           |To Err is Ferret  |
Director - Wherret Ferrets Halfway House & Ferretry  |To Forgive...well |
VP - Ferret Association of Greater Vancouver         |...That's Our Job!|
         We're on the Web! http://ww2.portal.ca/~cmc~/ferrets/fagv/
[Posted in FML issue 1732]